Quotes from Syracuse Orange as they step onto the stage at ACC Football Kickoff

Syracuse Orange didn’t have a great football season in 2020. A single win in the season that affected the pandemic would be recorded normally, but the program has continued to slip after 10 winning seasons that felt like the page had been turned in a shiny new ACC. While the sports department says the season isn’t a landmark or break year, in the dark session in the spring session, fans ask a lot of questions that don’t seem to have happy answers when they’re thrown around radio or commentary sections.

Today at ACC Football Kickoff we heard from head coach Dino Babers and team leaders Taj Harris, Josh Black and Aaron Servais as they asked questions from the entire ACC. As we expect, there wasn’t much biting insight or in-depth knowledge of the program, but the basics covered everything …

What the hell is going on at QB?

Harris: The quarterback’s room looks pretty good. It looked good when I came here. Tommy pretty good, Shrader pretty good. But it’s not just those guys. JaCobian Morgan, Luke MacPhail, a group of young guys. I feel like there are talented guys who can reel the ball.

Servais: Yeah, I mean, Garrett is definitely a talented guy. He’s really my roommate right now, so I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with him. Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t matter who’s behind us. On the front, if we can’t keep him upright, no matter how talented they are. There’s definitely a lot of talent in that room. Good to see those guys competing. But we have to do our job beforehand so those guys can really shine.

Will the line of attack be improved?

Babies: I think the first thing is that we need to call it exactly what it is. We had major injuries, injuries domino effect on the offensive line. Most of them are not on the football field. Most of them happen on foot on campus. Just a thing … Weve had some changes. We’ve got different coaches for some different roles. But I think the main difference is going to be that those guys are healthy and they’re not going to run a bunch of young guys out there with older guys. There is a senior group and they are ready to be. It always starts with the O-line and always with the line of defense. You can’t be good at football if you’re not good at these two places. Hopefully we get the health that we need for the season we want.

Servais: Coach Schmidt has been great. He has made a couple of changes and stuff in terms of technology and design. The biggest thing our line of crime and attack brings is a change in mentality. We really want to follow guys, get off the ball, really attack me. So what Id says, yeah.

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What steps have been taken to improve the one-win campaign in recent years?

Black: One of the main reasons I came back is to really lead this team. I’m not going to get up here and talk to everyone about what happened last year. I put a lot of responsibility on our last year’s season to myself just for not fulfilling the task I needed to be. I had to be the leader in the whole team. It’s easy to just lead a line of defense or your unit, but I didn’t reach the entire team. I had to get everyone involved, and in that I put a lot of responsibility on myself personally. So it didn’t sit right from the start myself. Secondly, I can’t go into a losing season. Only 1-10, these numbers are awful. You look at it on paper, it’s, oh, man. Just something didn’t feel right, didn’t sit right with me. I know personally that a lot of guys felt the same way. It felt like last year, not representing who we are as a football team. It is my job to make sure we get on the right path before getting out of here.

Servais: I know Josh talked about it a lot, that last year’s season left a bad taste in our mouths. Especially as the elderly, we were team leaders, we put a lot of the weight of this season on our shoulders. It is certainly not the way we wanted to leave our legacy, the 2020 legacy. Yeah, we definitely wanted to go back and fix the abuse.

Babers; I think the biggest thing is that we had a bad season, and we had a really, really good season. I don’t think they were as bad as we were in a bad season and maybe not as good as we were in a good one. But the thing I really want is consistency. I want to be consistently good, not great at times. If we find coherence, I believe we can find the support and foundation we need not only for the university but also for the community. It’s really important to me that they have a football team that they can be proud of. That is very, very important.

After the last 16 months, it has become more apparent than ever that Dino Babers ’role as one of the few power five color coaches is something that should be discussed a little more, and Coach was asked about it during the session. Here was his answer.

Every day I want to become known as a football coach. See how I say this. I want to be known as a football coach, a good football coach, and I appreciate you saying that. There is no doubt when I look in the mirror, wake up in the morning, I see an African American staring at me. It is the responsibility to ensure that the things I do in this task allow other people to enjoy and adopt the same profession. It gets harder sometimes. Sometimes it’s just like, Wow, I really want to do it, but I can’t do it. But you need to understand that you are not only doing it for your family, your university and your community, but for the benefit of others as well. I’m not perfect. I’m not always right. I try to be good as much as I can (laughter), not bad. But there is no doubt that you are sure to cross Ts and point Is, because you want those chances to happen to other people like me, that you have the same chances as me.